That’s because the best chance to overhaul the Tax Code anytime soon is by hitching it to legislation raising the $16.7 trillion debt limit. But many Republicans have other ideas as they begin drawing up their list of demands for raising the borrowing cap. At the top: Obamacare, an issue that unites Republicans unlike virtually any other major policy issue.

Text Size

-

+

reset

“Clearly, I think there’s more interest in Obamacare in relation to everything we talk about,” said Rep. Pat Tiberi (R-Ohio), who said he’s hopeful lawmakers will tackle tax reform as well. “It’s the issue that unites our conference.”

Lawmakers will need to raise the debt ceiling as soon as mid-October, and what House Republicans decide to demand as the price of their votes is critical to the future of tax reform.

There’s a reason many reform advocates have their sights set on the debt fight: It’s one of the few instances in which the House might have leverage to force the Democrat-controlled Senate to act.

Many House Republicans are reluctant to vote for what will surely be controversial changes to the tax system if they’re only going to die in the Senate, where Democratic leaders see tax reform as a revenue-raising opportunity. That would leave Republicans on the hook for unpopular votes, much as they were with Rep. Paul Ryan’s Medicare overhaul, which Democrats could seize upon in next year’s midterm elections.

With the debt limit, they could create a mechanism aimed at guaranteeing action on Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp’s still-unreleased plan, perhaps by making any increase contingent on reform advancing in Congress. Without that, tax reform could languish.

Republicans are far from settled on their debt-limit demands, and tax reform is only one of a number of items vying for consideration. Lawmakers say they may also press for cuts to entitlement programs such as Medicare, a fix for the next round of sequestration that’s set to hit the Pentagon and nondefense programs Oct. 1, economic initiatives like expediting consideration of the Keystone XL pipeline and, of course, Obamacare.

For their part, the Obama administration and congressional Democrats say they won’t negotiate on the debt limit — not for tax reform or anything else.

“We’re opposed to tying anything to the debt ceiling,” said Rep. Sander Levin, the ranking member of the Ways and Means Committee. “Tax reform has to stand on its own.”

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor — who left tax reform off a fall agenda distributed to fellow Republicans — proposed in a closed-door meeting that GOP lawmakers call for a one-year delay of Obamacare’s mandate that individuals carry insurance. While Republicans have long pushed to defund the law, taking dozens of votes to gut its budget, they see a new opening in the Obama administration’s decision to delay various components such as its so-called employer mandate.

“There’s no way that this law can work, and our side is committed to discussing how we go forward — which is first and foremost a delay of Obamacare,” Cantor said Thursday.

In a sign of the issue’s potency, House Republican leaders were forced last week to shelve a stopgap spending bill because conservatives were unhappy with provisions targeting the health care law.

In comparison, demanding tax reform would be much more politically perilous for Republicans. It would inevitably mean picking winners and losers as lawmakers search for the trillions in cuts needed to finance their promised rate reductions. That would surely divide Republicans.